Along the shores in the pale moonlight, the slender silhouette of a woman walks slowly and seemingly endlessly until the colossal shadow of a ship emerges over the horizon. As the ship moves closer and the shores become visible to those on board, she stops and turns to face the dark waters beyond the sandy beach. And then she throws a silent, expressionless glance my way and I instantly know that she’s beckoning me to dock my ship and come ashore.
I am the master of my mighty vessel, yet not a master of my own mind. I have to fight hard not to look in her direction though I know it's only a matter of time before I succumb to the lure of something inexplicable and surrender with all I've got. My eyes capture every move she makes. It’s the same nocturnal ritual each time. But still, I stand on the deck transfixed, as if it is the very first time such a sight is unfolding before my eyes. In a shimmering white dress, with her long lustrous hair blowing in the direction of the wind, she walks on towards the dark woods beyond, barefoot, not looking back till she reaches the very edge of it. Then she turns around and gives me another brief look and I know it’s time for me to follow suit.
While many people dread me and my band of men as the most notorious pirates these waters have ever witnessed, I consider all of us to be warriors fighting for a cause, fighting for our people in our own way. The men I have on board with me are the best I could have ever sought. For each man here is willing to put down his life if it comes to it, fighting to the very last. The cause for which we plunder, no other man may ever understand and it matters not who does. They say the invasion is still on in those distant shores but we believe only what we see whenever a shipload of soldiers comes our way. By principle we don’t hurt the women and children on board. Thankfully it never comes to that and you’ll know why soon enough. And by principle again, we don’t attack any other ship except for the ones that ferry the men in red and white. Yes, we are in a league of our own! We only fight and conquer those men who are mighty warriors themselves on land but mere rag dolls in our hands. We do not seek any great wealth that may come our way, for all the gold and silver in the world cannot fill the void that has become our lives. All we seek is vengeance.
The moonlight fades as we move deeper into the woods and only in parts can one see a sliver of white where the foliage is not so dense. But I don’t need any light. She is the beacon of silver that lights my path. And I silently follow her till we come to a clearing in the woods, the only place on the island perhaps where one can seek to be in absolute solitude. For surrounding us on all sides are wild beasts and creatures of the night, which for some strange reason keep away from this very clearing. She continues to walk until she finally merges with two wooden logs fastened together in the form of a cross. At this very moment, a familiar numbing pain sears through every cell in my body and I fall down in a heap over a mound of hard earth.
It’s all still fresh on my mind like yesterday. One moment we were a happy couple enjoying a quiet evening meal in our cottage. The very next moment, that sense of tranquility was shattered by heavy pounding on our door, almost bringing it down. One look outside the window confirmed that all was not well around. It seemed like our entire village had been set ablaze and flames were soaring high, not too far from where our modest cottage stood waiting its turn. That we were doomed was perhaps certain from the very first instant when we realized that our village and the surrounding farming lands were under attack by soldiers of some foreign land. But we were not ones to give up and surrender so easily. Some of us fortunately found our escape route through the high seas and pulled away from our otherwise idyllic village and set sail to a destination and fate that was as yet unknown.
As I drifted in and out of pain that seemed so physical and so real, I fought hard to overcome the grief that engulfed me. My sweet ----- , she couldn’t really be gone, could she ? This simply wasn’t real. This had to be some kind of nightmare. For how else could I still be alive without my loving wife and soul mate beside me? How could such an angel who filled my days with laughter, my dull moments with cheer, my disappointments with fresh hope and my life with absolute bliss, be gone now forever? If only I could wake up from this, only to discover the nightmare’s finally over!
We sailed on for days, with depleting food supplies. There was a point in time when we had to let go of our very own as the weak and the sick perished with the passage of time. But we still didn’t have any land in sight. But, for those of us who survived it all, a more terrible fate was in store. It must have been a fortnight after we set sail from our village and it finally looked as if we might be approaching land. And needless to say, our joys knew no bounds when we actually did. But those joys were to be short lived. For the very next morning, we were discovered by those very men in red and white who’d attacked and destroyed our homes and taken over all the assets we ever possessed. If they had just stopped at that, we might have been able to forgive them a lot sooner. But as fate would have it, they preyed on our womenfolk and killed our young. By the end of it all, there were just a handful of us men, wounded badly and awaiting death to come and reunite us with those we’d just lost. But as fate would have it again, we survived. To tell the tale and to avenge the death of our loved ones.
I weep and wail like a human possessed. I tear at the ground with my bare hands like a mad man. Grief knows no logic. It’s not meant to. It only needs to be vented out, if not to completely disappear at one go, at least so as to make it subside until the next time. In a distance I can hear the roar of the ocean. And I know my comrades await my return. They need me, their commander, to lead them and fight with them, until the very last ship of soldiers in red and white have met a similar end, as did our kith and kin. As I said, I am a warrior by my own right. I have duties to fulfill, fierce battles at sea to be fought. So I pick myself up and make my way back slowly but surely, towards the shore…
It’s rather ironical that we start out loving another, not by choice but by fate or whatever else that makes it happen. And sometimes the very object of our affections may be snatched away from us by a cruel twist of fate. But when this happens, we can choose to let go and move on or else to continue to love and long, pointless as it may seem to all others around. Thus, a love that started out as one that was not by choice would then become the only choice we would care to make.
